Friday, October 23, 2009

Tomorrow I will slosh through the rain to the Bangor Public Library to take part in a poetry-reading event for 350.org's International Day of Climate Action. While I don't quite see how driving an hour to Bangor and reading 6 pages from a book will help stop global warming, the reading itself stuffs 13 poets, a chemist, a jazz combo, and snacks into a scant 3 hours and consequently will certainly be a bash. 

I'm planning to read from chapter 7 of Tracing Paradise, the one titled "Clear-Cuts." I hope it goes over okay with this crowd because, while it certainly does deal with environmental degradation, it also avers that humans (or least this human) are not only complicit but likely to remain so. As I was rereading the chapter this morning, I was glad, once again, that I'd quoted Thomas Hardy's dry comment: "it is only the old story that progress and picturesqueness do not harmonise."

The old story indeed.

Dinner tonight: pot au feu, I'm thrilled to say. And maybe apple pie.

2 comments:

charlotte gordon said...

You really are a funny writer. That is quite a collection of readers. Chapter 7 is perfect. I had my students read your paragraph on Harmony as an example of how to write about place.

As for your comment to me, that is precisely the problem isn't it. The one we have been talking about. I may well Hate her, or worse, find her tedious and conventional and not at all noteworthy. But maybe not.

Dawn Potter said...

I hope you find your new mystery writer wonderful. Maybe she'll be like my Milly Jourdain find. And for anyone who wonders what we're talking about, read Charlotte's blog. She's working on a book about Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley and is unearthing forgotten players.